If any Iraqi units put up a fight, it will be Saddam’s personal bodyguard, also known as the Special Republican Guards Baghdad Division. (In Third World nations, long unit names usually means short troop quality. Anyway.)

The problem with city fighting is that too many people die. Too many civilians — either too stupid or scared to leave, or used as human shields by their leaders — too many of your own soldiers, and it’s too hard to surround the bad guys so that you don’t have to kill them.

Been avoiding OpinionJournal lately. Just haven’t had the time. Been missing out. Here’s Pete du Pont on what the last two weeks have really meant:

This month we’ve witnessed the death of two interrelated U.S. foreign-policy doctrines: containment and United Nations multilateralism. Containment was born of the need to limit Soviet expansion. Multilateralism came from the belief that individual nation-states should never again be allowed–as Germany did twice in the last century–to shatter global security.

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush has accelerated the demise of these doctrines. He has continually said this nation will not wait to be attacked again. In May he elaborated a more coherent doctrine, one of pre-emption, when he spoke to West Point’s graduating class.

But the president signed the death warrant for containment and multilateralism this past Sept. 12, when he stood before the U.N. and admonished the international, multilateral body for not enforcing its 16 resolutions against Iraq. Any doubt about the death of these doctrines should have been dispelled last week, when Democratic congressional leaders endorsed the spirit of a proposed resolution authorizing the president to use pre-emptive force against Iraq to protect the security of this nation.

Forgive the long extract, but it was needed.

Maybe I’m just biased — du Pont is the only Republican Presidential candidate I ever worked for. Did some doorbell pushing and whatnot during the run-up to the Iowa Caucases back in ’88, and even “managed” “his” “campaign” for Professor Rick Hardy’s famous University of Missouri-Columbia mock election that same spring.

Give a freshman with a skinny tie and a big mouth a podium, and there’s gonna be trouble.

Got off topic there. If du Pont is right, the ramifications probably aren’t as great as he claims, but they’ll certainly be long-lasting, perhaps permanent — or at least as permanent as any new world order ever is.

Hopefully, we’ll go back to having a rambunctious, lucid Congress, willing to engage in real debate, and not act just as a rubber stamp or tiny yapping dog. So our actions abroad might become more unilateral, but certainly not before some serious multilateralism up on the Hill.

As for containment — madmen cannot be contained. And there’s not a rational actor in the world willing to take on the United States. That doctrine didn’t die with Bush’s words; it died along with 3,000 Americans last September.

On the other hand, staking our hopes on a policy of deterrence would cost little now (except a loss of face), but it would run the much greater risk of postponing the day of reckoning to a time of Iraq’s choosing. Given Mr. Hussein’s history of catastrophic miscalculations and his faith that nuclear weapons can deter not him but us, there is every reason to believe that the question is not one of war or no war, but rather war now or war later

Daschle claims Bush is trying to “politicize this war. We ought not politicize the rhetoric about war and life and death.”

Well, that’s not quite true. Bush was speaking of Senate inaction on the bill creating a Department of Homeland Security. The rest of Bush’s statement said, “I will not accept a Department of Homeland Security that does not allow this president, and future presidents, to better keep the American people secure.”

Daschle loses points for being a crybaby and misrepresenting what the President said. Bush loses points for using such invective to force action on a bad bill creating a useless, but possibly oppressive, new Federal bureaucracy.

“But… but… but what if other countries, countries somehow even worse than ours, use the Bush Doctrine as justification to preemptively invade their neighbors? Millions dead!”

I’ll put this nicely: Bullshit.

What, right now, prevents any nation, other than the US, from doing exactly what they please?

Serbia invaded Croatia and Bosnia. Palestinians blow up Jews. Libya thrusts into Chad (which could be a gay porn title). India and Pakistan wave nukes at each other, while encouraging one another’s minorities to commit barbarous acts. Turkey invades Cypress. China and Vietnam have at it. North Korea lobs missiles over the South. Eritrea and Ethiopia go their separate ways, then go after each other’s throats. Morocco annexes Western Sahara. Russia bombs Georgia. Iraq invades Kuwait. Iraq invades Iran. Damn near everybody invades Congo. And everybody kills the Jews, to paraphrase Tom Lehrer.

We must be the only nation in the world to ever bother first asking for permission before defending our interests.

Of the slaughters that have been prevented or stopped in the last 50 years, damn near all of them have been prevented or stopped by American force of arms. Remember when the Warsaw Pact invaded West Germany? Remember how North Korea annexed the rest of the peninsula? Have any horrible memories of China

Bret Stephens, editor-in-chief of the Jerusalem Post, says the Israeli-Palestinian War needs a name. Despite the low intensity, it is a real war, after all:

What is this war all about for Israel, and for the Jews? Two years into it, at least some of us can agree that it must be called a “war,” and not go by such weak euphemisms as “the violence,” “the conflict,” or “the situation.” Beyond that, as these short essays from prominent Jews (and one Palestinian) in Israel and abroad show, there is scant agreement.

I’ve been calling it the Israeli-Palestinian War for months now — but that’s an inelegant name at best. And it hardly begins to describe what’s really going on.

Here are a few suggestions already garnered:

End of the Occupation War
Peace for the Settlements War
The War of the Life of the Jews
The War of the Jews’ Last Chance
The War of Sovereignty
The War of Jewish Sovereignty

None of those work for me, either. Nor does “The West Bank Phase of the Western War Against Terror.”

A decision on whether to proceed with the V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor transport or abandon the program will be made next summer. The problem is that whatever solution is found for the “vortex ring state” (the problem that has caused the crashes) might eventually limit the aircraft’s operations so much that it is no longer tactically useful. If the V-22 is cancelled, expect the Pentagon to swiftly pick a helicopter to replace it.